The Progress of Hellenism in Alexander's Empire (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 edition. Excerpt: ...had once sprung, and no attempt was made, beyond bringing out the annals of the old kingdom in Greek (by Manetho), to examine and utilise all the deep and occult lore of the priests. We may depend upon it that these priests were not willing to impart it to the upstart Greeks, and the hieroglyphic writing and strange language were almost impenetrable barriers to the few Greeks who attempted to learn them. So the wisdom and the art of Memphis, Thebes, Heliopolis, and all the other splendid old Egyptian cities remained a thing apart and foreign to the Alexandrians; the Egyptians were regarded 1 The Petrie Papyri, which it was my highest good fortune to decipher and publish, give us a quantity of information about one of these settlements (probably the most important) in the Fayyum. as a foreign and subject population, only fit to labour and pay taxes, and no systematic attempt was made to Hellenize them. Such has always been the fate of unhappy Egypt. From the earliest days her kings and governors have been strangers, and her people--a beautiful, gentle, laborious people--have been so engrained with the instinct of submission that it will require long efforts to reverse this ancient and lamentable education in slavery. But in the days of the Ptolemies Egypt still possessed her powerful and native priestly caste, and with it a fund of resistance to the Macedonian kings with which they were soon obliged to reckon. Neither the first nor the second Ptolemy has left us many monuments of note; the second, indeed, one which already shows the beginning of the Egyptian reaction--a ruined temple, made wholly of red granite blocks brought seven hundred miles from the first cataract to the Delta, adorned with his name and attributes in thoroughly...